Federal government keeps operating through Dec. 22

WASHINGTON – President Trump signed legislation Friday to keep the federal government operating through Dec. 22 as negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders on a two-year budget deal continued.

The stopgap spending bill passed Congress Thursday without any action on the debt limit.

The Treasury announced earlier in the week the window for purchasing state and local government securities, also known as SLGS, would close at noon Friday.

The stop-gap spending measure averted a government shutdown at midnight Friday and has no policy attachments.

The House measure passed 235-193 with most Democrats and 18 Republicans voting in opposition.

The Senate approved the measure 81-14.

The negotiations center on setting higher spending levels for defense spending than the current budget cap, which Democrats say they will agree to only if higher domestic spending ceilings are part of the deal.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined their Republican counterparts at a White House meeting Thursday with President Trump.

Defense Secretary James Mattis also participated in the meeting, which included Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the president, Ryan and McConnell want negotiations on immigration issues related to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, to “be handled on a different track.”

Schumer and Pelosi struck to their position after the White House meeting. In a joint statement, they said their priorities are “to strengthen our national defense with parity for our domestic budget, to fund veterans and the fight against opioids, to address CHIP and Community Health Centers, to save Americans’ endangered pensions, and to pass the DREAM Act.”

A deal on a new debt ceiling is seen as tied those negotiations.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that Treasury’s use of extraordinary measures, including the suspension of SLGS sales, can keep the federal government from running out of cash until late March or early June.

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